The spools hummed; she kept her finger on the pause switch, and in a moment came to another shot that was hauntingly familiar like the first. This one showed a small boy, actively encouraged by his mother, defecating on a picture. About all that one could see clearly of the picture was that there was a cross in it, and toward the top of the cross was what might have been a halo.
“Are you a practicing Christian, señor?” asked Señora Posador.
I shook my head.
“Most Vadeanos are Catholics. They would at once recognize that as a copy of the picture of the Crucifixion which hangs over the high altar in our cathedral. It is by one of our most distinguished artists.”
She let the spools run forward a little more. The next picture at which she stopped showed a man with a whip as big as a threshing flail, lashing the naked back of a little girl. After that the one with the Negro was repeated, the children still in their obscene postures; and so through again in order.
“I doubt if I need show you any more of this sequence,” said Señora Posador quietly. “Let us contrast these pictures with what was interspersed in your interview.”
The tape spun forward some distance. Cordoban, on the screen, said, “aquí esta el señor Hakluyt,” I came smiling into the range of the camera, and she stopped the spool.
I saw myself — or at any rate a recognizable likeness of myself — dipping my fingers for holy water into the font at the entrance to the cathedral. Another few yards of tape: I was shaking hands with el Presidente, and then in a few more moments I was kneeling before the bishop I had seen coming out of the elevator at the TV studios. Finally, before the sequence began to repeat, I was shown — this was so crude it nearly made me laugh — as an angel in a long white gown, holding a flaming sword over the monorail central, from beneath which little figures ran like frightened ants.
“That is enough, I think,” said Señora Posador. She shut off the recorder. “Now I think you understand, no?”
Confused, I shook my head. “I do not,” I said. “Not at all!”
She pushed aside a number of empty tape-cartons and lifted herself up on the bench beside the recorder, slender legs swinging. She took out one of her black cigarettes and lit it thoughtfully.
“Then I will do my best to make it clear,” she said offhandedly. “You know, you say, what subliminal perception is?”
I frowned. “Well, I know the principle — you project a message on a TV screen or a movie screen for a fraction of a second, and it’s, alleged to impress the subconscious mind. They tried it out in movie houses with simple words like ‘ice cream,’ and some people said it worked and others said it didn’t. I thought it had gone out of fashion, because it proved unreliable or something.”
“Not exactly. Oh, it is true that it was not reliable. But indisputably it worked at least part of the time, and of course in most civilized countries it was immediately recognized as a powerful political weapon. If it could be made consistent in its effect, it could be used to indoctrinate the population. One of the first people to emphasize this was — Alejandro Mayor.”
Memories of hints contained in Mayor’s first book confirmed this. I nodded.
“It so happened,” said Señora Posador, looking at the glowing tip of her cigarette, “that twenty years ago Juan Sebastian Vados was campaigning for the presidency In our country. It was the first election after an unpopular dictatorship. The television service had just been brought to the country — at first it served only Cuatrovientos, Astoria Negra, and Puerto Joaquín — and its director supported Vados.
“Who first saw the possibilities? I cannot say. It was all kept very secret. In most countries use of subliminal perception is banned by law, because its effectiveness — oh, it has been made reliable by testing! — it is inhuman. But in Aguazul there was no law. The single obstacle was that most of our people were, still are, illiterate. Yet that in its way was an advantage; it was soon found that even for persons who could read, pictures worked better than words. A message in words you can argue with, but pictures have the impact of something seen con los ojos de si.”
She was still staring at her cigarette, but plainly was not seeing it, because the ash was growing and trembling and she made no move to disturb it. Her voice became taut and a little harsh.
“Vados, with advice from Mayor who had become a friend of his, employed this knowledge. He broadcast very often in this technique a picture of his opponent copulating with a donkey, and — since television was rather new to us and very many people watched very much of the time — his opponent was called foul names as he went through the streets, his house was stoned daily, and — and in the end he killed himself.”
There was a pause.
At length Señora Posador recollected herself, shifted a little on her perch, and threw the ash from her cigarette aside.
“And so, my friend, it has continued. Those of us who know what we know — and object — never go to the movies; we never watch the television without a blinker. With practice has come skill, and what you have seen here is typical of the technique as it is employed today.
“It is now known for certain to many of our citizens that the squatters in the shantytowns practice bestial cruelty to their children, that they offend the morals of the young, that they elaborately blaspheme against the Christian religion. It is likewise known that you are a good man, a good Catholic, and a close friend of the president, whom you may never have seen in your life.”
“Once, in a car the other day,” I said. “That’s all.” She shrugged. “I saw you smile at the picture of yourself as an avenging angel,” she went on. “Yet even that is carefully planned. Many persons watching the program may have been children who believe in such things. Others — many, many more in the small towns and villages and even in Cuatrovientos and Puerto Joaquín — are simple and uneducated, and likewise hold such things to be literally true. You are a free man, Señor Hakluyt, compared to anyone walking the streets of Vados. You come here; you can go away again; it will not matter that your thinking has been influenced in Aguazul. But it would be better to watch no more television.”
“Are you trying to tell me that all the TV programs are loaded with this kind of crap?” I demanded.
She slipped from her perch and bent to open a sliding door set under the bench where she was sitting. “Choose any of these,” she invited, indicating a row of tape spools filed on a shelf. “They are programs transmitted during the last few months. I will do the same again for you.”
“Don’t trouble,” I said distractedly.
She looked at me with something approaching pity. “As I imagined, Señor Hakluyt, you are a good man. It shocks you to discover what methods are employed in the most governed country in the world!”
I lit a cigarette, staring at her. “I was talking to Dr. Mayor last night,” I said after a pause. “He used that same phrase. What does it mean? What does it really mean?”
“To the ordinary citizen? Oh, not very much. Our government is subtle as governments go — always it is the velvet glove where possible. For most of our people, the twenty years of Vados’s rule may truly be described as happy. Never before was Aguazul so prosperous, so peaceful, so satisfied. But we who know — and there are not many of us, señor — what long invisible chains we carry, fear for the future. If Mayor were to die, for example, who can predict the consequences? For all his elaborate theories, he is still a brilliant improvisateur; his gift is to trim his sails to the wind of change a moment before it begins to blow. With him, Vados, who is growing old — who can tell whether he has planned well enough for another to take the controls when he has gone, and keep our country on a steady forward course? And there is a still further danger: the danger that this disguised control may have worked all too well, that if change becomes necessary, we may have been too skillfully guided for too long to respond, so that before we can again forge ahead we must fall back in chaos.”